Stefan,

>you dig out funny things. It happened quite suddenly that you began to
>quote heaps of references in your posts. There must be a new source
>which you now have access to. Which is it? Did you discover a new li-
>brary? :-)

Kind of: the biomedical library and the library of archaeology and anthropology
of U. Penn are excellent. You can search abstracts at
http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/PubMed/

>My radical opinion on hot spices:
>Chili, garlic, onions, mustard etc. are all for severely   s i c k
>people. When I was on the top of my heavy metal intoxification I
>craved garlic. The burning was   s o   good, the taste excellent and
>I could eat huge amounts. I also could eat big parts of chili whereas no
>other instincto whom I know was able to eat only a tiny piece.

You are talking about eating spices the instincto way. I am sure that the most
"toxic" Mexican couldn't do that. I myself used to like spicy foods, but
certainly couldn't eat monomeals of hot chili.

>It's true that hot spices cause salivation (even of tears ;-)) and
>speed up the digestion. So they truly help in detoxing. But in my very
>humble (but radical) opinion they are only needed in severe cases.

I have no definite opinion about spices. They can indeed help digestion, among
other properties. What was interesting in this text was that:

 -taste preferences have a strong cultural component in humans -which could
interfere with instinctive eating.
 -foods that would give a very strong stop are not necessarily harmful

And of course, the mysterious process of how children come to like spicy foods
is particularly interesting.

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis
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